Land and water degradation, food and water supply shortages, drug-resistant infections from overuse of antibiotics, overuse of pesticides and disease, sea level rise affecting coastal areas, microplastics/single-use plastic pollution on land and in the oceans, rapidly melting ice at the Poles, heatwaves, droughts, extreme rainfall, powerful hurricanes, and more –> people and animals migrating, people and animals dying.
It’s real, it’s happening now, and it’s all connected.
From your home and life right now, this may seem remote or, at best, a minor, sporadic inconvenience; things that only happen somewhere else. If so, you are lucky. More and more of us are directly affected everyday. Inevitably, all of us and all of our families will be directly affected. It is a matter of when …
Once, we needed leaders with a long view to recognize and begin to act against the degradation of the Earth. Now, we need leaders who unite people, who will take risks against the political grain and act now.
But, more than that, we need to educate ourselves and act. We can do things as individuals that, collectively, add up and also pressure and influence others to act. We do not need to suffer fools. If we care about our families, our children and grandchildren and then their children and grandchildren and on and on, we need resolve and action now. And, that includes how and where we spend our money, and for whom we vote.
It is a trap to think that someone else can fix everything for us. This is not a movie or TV. No one person, no one government, and no one organization can do it all–the issues and challenges are global. We have to be thoughtful, take effective actions ourselves, and we have to work together (find that common interest). Because we are all in this together; there is nowhere else to go.
